CITIZEN-TIMES.com

Asheville has backed away from a study that could have opened the door to
logging in the 22,000 acres of city-owned watershed protecting the North Fork
and Bee Tree reservoirs. Good.

Councilman Jan Davis summed up the situation pretty well when he said, "This
thing seems to have taken a whole life of its own that I didn't foresee." What
started out as an initiative to improve access for emergency vehicles, in
response to problems following a 2001 small airplane crash, turned into a
full-blown watershed study that gave a lot of attention to logging.

The first-phase plan adopted last summer outlined an ambitious program to
upgrade roads, repair bridges and clear trees from slopes above roads. The plan
wasted no time in bringing up the question of logging. The second paragraph of
the introduction begins, "Silviculture ... is permitted." The document said tree
thinning, followed later by "small clear-cuts" would help promote regeneration
of oaks, which provide important food for black bears.

The council modified that plan to make it clear no logging could occur
without council approval, but critics were not satisfied. The plan "would be a
foot in the door" for logging," Monroe Gilmour, who lives near the North Fork
watershed, told council members Tuesday. The Swannanoa Valley Alliance for
Beauty and Prosperity said concern for access and for wildlife habitat "are
simply 'Trojan horses' to get commercial logging into the watershed."

"There are a lot of efforts over the past few years to go into our public
drinking supply watersheds and turn them into timber management areas," Hugh
Irwin, conservation planner with the Southern Appalachian Forest Coalition, said
last summer. "This seems to be the latest effort ... and I think it is a
somewhat disturbing movement."

Interim water resources director David Hanks insisted the initiative was not
a logging plan. The water system has not had the personnel to keep the roughly
65 miles of roads in the watershed maintained, according to officials. Downed
trees hampered access after the plane crash. Additionally, officials were
worried about access in case of fire.

The issue before the council Tuesday was a detailed second-phase study
closely examining roads, stands of trees and other features. The five-year study
would include recommendations, according to Hanks. Among those recommendations
would have been what trees could have been cut. "The only way to generate any
money is through timber," Hanks said.

Be that as it may, the function of the watersheds is not to produce money,
but rather to protect the city's supply of drinking water.

Another issue is the impact of logging on views from the Blue Ridge Parkway.
From the National Park Service's Craggy Gardens Visitors Center, the view of the
North Fork Reservoir and valley from many vistas along the parkway are among the
parkway's crown jewels. A parkway representative urged council at a public
hearing this past summer not to go forward with the logging plan.

The council Tuesday decided against the study, largely on the basis that the
cost of nearly $300,000 was too high. (There was one bid of just more than
$250,000, but staff said the bidder did not have either the assets or the staff
to fulfill the contract.) Instead, council told city staff to come back with a
scaled-down proposal that would be carried out largely by staff.

Logging still could rear its head again, but it shouldn't. The scaled-back
study should concentrate on access.

As Councilman Brownie Newman put it, "If our goal is clean water, the natural
processes that have been at work for thousands of years ... do a very good job
as long as we don't mess it up."